The Fell Guardian is the first Decapitation Journey! Most of the Decapitation Journeys are special Hunt Journeys where the players are hunting down and forever destroying one of Radukar the Wolf's Lieutenants, to destroy his infrastructure and influence in the city and ultimately remove Radukar as tyrant! This first one isn't removing a unique character, but rather taking on a Vargskyr to discover some mystery about HOW Radukar has held on to power so tightly!
For each Decapitation Journey, all Heroes must be a specific level, and experience cannot be gained beyond that level until the Decapitation Journey has been successfully completely. For this one, Heroes need to be at Level One and none of them could gain any experience beyond Level One until this Journey has been completed!
We played through this on New Years Day.
Finnegan returned to playing Jelson Darrock and Brutogg Corpse-Eater. It is so fun when Finnegan is playing these two. He is constantly role-playing Darrock giving commands and trying to intimidate the hostiles he faces - with a voice not unlike Batman from the How It Should Have Ended videos...
Amanda played Cleona Zeitengale and Glaurio Ven Alten III
Things looked like they might start off bad, when the first room was small and didn't have a Mysterious Object, so the hostiles were crammed against the entrance... depending on who went first, if they couldn't punch their way OUT, they could very likely find themselves stuck in the Drop Zone when the Suffocating Gravetide showed up on the next turn!
Luckily Brutogg went first and has a special ability that lets him shoulder though a space occupied by a hostile and started swatting bats out of the sky from behind, before tearing off into the next room to start clobbering (and likely EATING!?) some Zombies!
Jelsen Darrock and Cleona Zeitengale finished off the bats
And Glaurio Ven Alten III charged ahead to help Brutogg finish off the Zombies...
By the second round, Darrock had charged ahead to reveal the next two rooms/squares and ended up fighing Watch Captain Halgrim and two Ulfenwatch and a Vyrkos Blood-Born Vampire!
The Ulfenwatch were despatched quickly, but Halgrim was a little tougher...
and was quickly joined by the feral vampire! Darrock was wounded severly bu this encounter...
Ven Alten finished off the Watch Captain, and pushed past the Vyrkos Blood-Born and into the next building, then turned to shoot the vampire!
The others charged past anxious to make some space between them and the Suffocating Gravetide. Jelson Darrock lingered a bit, needing to catch his breath and recuperate from a few of his injuries!
Next they encountered MORE Ulfenwatch (that were likely coming to the aid of the Watch Captain, but arrived a little too late!)
... and Corpse Rats!
Brutogg and Cleona took care of the undead rats.
Ven Alten pushed through to the next square and dealt with MORE Ulfenwatch...
and then it was time for some Ogor on Ogor violence and Brutogg laid a severe beating on one of Radukar's Undead Ogor bodyguard of the Kosargi Nightguard.
Unfortunetly, that did not kill it... After Brutogg dealt it NINE damage... Cleona came along and threw one of her sticks at it and dealt the final damage that took it out...
There wasn't anything to rush ahead and kill... so Darrok decided to explore one of the Mysterious Objects...
Pushing into the last two room, the heroes encountered more Corpse Rats... and ANOTHER Kosargi Nightguard!
Time for some MORE Ogor on Ogor violence!!
And that was it! They'd outrun the Suffocating Gravetide and made it to the Monsters Lair
It was a little easier that a regular Deliverance Journey - as they didn't have to keep doing Warn actions and only had to go through ten rooms...
The encounters were noticeably a bit more difficult now that they are level one - encountering more than one Kosargi Nightguard, without even going through the whole deck... Watch Captain Halgrim showing up WITH a pair of Ulfenwatch!
The Monster's Lair.
They'd discovered a Vargskyr that was constanty skulking in one area of down and discerned that it must be bound there and was guarding something of great importance... So it was determined this monster must be slain to discovered what treasure it guarded!
Once I'd read through the scenario and how it all worked, there was considerable discussion of tactics and how to deal with he Vargskyr... who seemed pretty deadly...
The Vargskyr did not set up on the table... When it's activation card came up, it dealt a point of damage to the Hero nearest a randomly determined Lynchgate (places where reinforcements arrive)
The Vargskyr would arrive only when one of the Mysterious Objects was examined... Then it would arrive, interrupting the normal sequence and take TWO actions before the acting hero continued with their activations... GENERALLY it meant attacking said hero twice... though there was a chance it would do a HOWL and stun all Heroes on the table!
As soon as the Vargskyr took any damage it would disappear into the shadows again and go back to striking from the shadows... until someone explored another Mysterious Object!
The initial plan was to stick together and have allies close at hand when exploring Mysterious Objects... very quickly the plan evolved to ensuring there were allies close at hand that had already activated that had saved reaction dice! Because when the Vargskyr arrived, it was "deployed" and reaction dice can be used when a hostile deploys... so there was a chance to deal it damage BEFORE it actually attacked anyone - and that would make it fuck off back into the shadows instantly...
After the last Mysterious Object is searched, the Vargskyr remained on the table...
Brutogg was the first out of the Landing Zone and charged around towards one of the first Mysterious Objects they planned to search. He'd only had one action left by the time he got to the Corpse Rats... and MISSED! The rats ended up chewing on him pretty good, dealing TWO GRIEVOUS WOUNDS and giving him TWO DISEASE COUNTERS!?
Jelson Darrock moved up and held a position by a small doorway to block any bats from getting by! He'd reserved a few action dice and attacked and killed one or two of them as they moved up!
Cleona and Glaurio caught up and helped despatch the bats.
There were only Bats and Rats in this scenario... rather than drawing encounter cards, the bats and rats just stayed on the table and were never driven off, those that died were removed, but everytime bats or rats were activated a d12 was rolled an a success one returned via a random Lynchgate on a critical success TWO returned... which seemed like there would be a constant stream of them... but once they'd killed most... the only returned occasionally and weren't such a big pain... At the beginning, though, they caused some trouble!
Luckily Cleona Zeitengale was on this mission and one of her special abilities is to remove diseased conditions! Which was a HUGE help when Brutogg got bit twice... otherwise two of his activation dice would be reduced to ONES for the rest of the game.
It was the MAIN REASON Cleona was brought along on this Journey!
So Brutogg explored the first Mysterious Object...
and the Vargskyr appeared and tried to tear Brutogg a new asshole!
I think Brutogg was at FOUR GRIEVOUS WOUNDS at this point (one more damage, and he'd have been out of action!) but luckily he has amazing vitality and recuperates quite easily... and even automatically recuperates on step at the beginning of his activation!
So Brutogg took a minute to recuperate while Jelson Darrock and Cleona Zeitengale rushed to the next Mysterious Object! So much for sticking togehter!
This time Cleona searched the Mysterious Object while Jelson stood by at the ready...
The Vargskyr leapt from the shadows and savagely attacked Cleona - she too was dealt two Grievous Wounds!
Jelson was able to follow up with an attack that dealt an injury to the Vargskyr and sent it scampering back to the shadows.
Each time it did, it ended up recovering all the injuries it had received (due to one of the round end events... multiple times...)
Glaurio set about clearing away rats, when it became clear that once gone, they did NOT come back in large numbers very quickly. I rolled a LOT of misses on that d12 - which mean NONE arrived that turn!
Jelson Darrock got to the next Mysterious Object... but waited a bit for others to arrive...
Once Cleona and Glaurio had caught up and saved a few reaction dice, Glaurio seached the Mysterious Object...
Now that they figured out if they were waiting with saved reaction dice and that MULTIPLE heroes could react to the Vargskyr DEPLOYING they blasted it as it arrived and sent it back to the shadows BEFORE it could even hit anyone...
For the final Mysterious Object, they set it up so Brutogg would open it, while Darrock and Ven Alten both had three saved reserve dice and were ready to start blasting away the moment it arrived. A reaction die can be used after any hostile, Deploys, Ends a Move, or after it makes a Weapon Action!
So as it arrived, both Glaurio and Darrock shot at it, and after each attack against Brutogg they shot at it... and after it was done it's two actions, Brutogg used the last of his activation dice to finish the Vargskyr off!! BAM!
A rat swarm came squeaking out in a last gesture of defiance, but it was easily swept aside by Darrok and Ven Alten...
And the Heroes made it safely to the Extraction Zone!
Success at this Journey neither raised nor lowered either Fear or Influence (failure increased BOTH!). The Extraction Event lowered the Fear Level, though, bringing it down to TWO!!
So now this batch of heroes have gained experience and are on their way to Level Two!
It was decided the next Journey should be a Hunt. This would bring the influence down to three. It would raise the Fear to three, but with them both so low, they figured they could run a few Scavenge Journeys and gain some Realmstone to buy some more fancy upgrades!
At the end of the Journey a passage was read out explaining that they discovered it has been protecting a Grave-Sand Hourglass engraved with necromantic rules, that Octren Glimscry was able to identify as a Phylactery. When the owner of one of these artifacts would be slain, another soul in the Mortal Realms would die in it's stead... and this was how Radukar and his minions were impossible to defeat - how many times had they struck down Watch Captain Halgrim or Gorslav the Gravekeeper, only to have fight them again the next day... or even a few moments later!?
They would have to find and destroy these Phylacteries to deal with each of the Wolf's lieutenants!
Amanda noted Grombrindal's card in the box and wondered if it were a hostile or a character I'd not let them play with...? I pointed out that it wasn't that I hadn't let them play with him, it was that he had his own special rules and was played on his own... I suggested I would be willing to run Grombrindal through a scenario on his own, if either of them were interested. Amanda said she'd like to so...
Since the next journey they'd planned to go on was a Hunt Journey - to hunt down more of Radukar's lesser lieutenants - and lower the Influence value, I thought that would be a perfect scenario for Grombrindal to go on...
So, while the Heroes celebrated their success, a stout stranger slipped into Ulfenkarn on his own, unnoticed. With hair white as the driven snow, he'd come to lend a hand to those who would oppose the vampire tyrant and strike a solid blow against Radukar...
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